Lewis Morris (19th century)
'' Sir '''Lewis Morris' (23 January 1833 - 10 November 1907) was an Anglo-Welsh poet.Glyn Johns, Morris, Sir Lewis (1833-1907), Dictionary of Welsh Biography. Web, Dec. 19, 2019. Life Overview Morris was born at Penrhyn, Carnarvonshire, and educated at Sherborne and Oxford. He was called to the Bar, and practised as a conveyancer until 1880, after which he devoted himself to the promotion of higher education in Wales, and became honorary secretary and treasurer of the New Welsh Univ. In 1871 he published Songs of Two Worlds, which showed the influence of Tennyson, and was well received, though rather by the wider public than by more critical circles. It was followed in 1876-1877 by The Epic of Hades, which had extraordinary popularity, but which, though exhibiting undeniable talent both in versification and narrative power, lacked the qualities of the higher kinds of poetry. It deals in a modern spirit with the Greek myths and legends. Other works are A Vision of Saints, Gwen, The Ode of Life, and Gycia, a tragedy.John William Cousin, "Morris, Lewis," A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: Dent / New York: Dutton, 1910, 280. Wikisource, Web, Feb. 14, 2018. Family Morris was born in Spilman Street, Carmarthon, the eldest surviving son of Lewis Edward Williams Morris, solicitor of Carmarthen, by Sophia, daughter of John Hughes, shipowner and merchant of the same town. His great-grandfather was Welsh poet Lewis Morris (1703-1765). Besides an elder brother and a sister who died in infancy, Morris had 3 brothers, William Hughes (d. 1003) and Charles Edward (both of whom became solicitors), and John (rector of Narberth from 1885).Thomas, 649. Youth and education Morris was educated at Queen Elizabeth's grammar school, Carmarthen (1841-18477), and at Cowbridge (1847-1850) under Hugo D. Harper, whom he followed, with a number of other Welsh boys, to Sherborne, where he remained one year (1850-1851). With Harper he formed a lifelong friendship. At Cowbridge he wrote a prize poem on Pompeii; at Sherborne he won the Leweston prize for classics and a prize for an English poem, A Legend of Thermopylæ. He proceeded to Jesus College, Oxford, matriculating on 26 June 1851, and took first class in both classical moderations in 1853 and literæ humaniores in 1855 (Harriet Thomas, Father and Son, p. 51). He earned a B.A. in 1856 and an M.A. in 1858, and was awarded the chancellor's prize for the English essay on "The Greatness and Decline of Venice," also in 1858. "Nothing but the possession of more than the statutable amount of property prevented his election to a fellowship" (Hardy, Jesus College, p. 201). For the same reason he had been ineligible for an entrance scholarship, but had been granted the rank of an honorary scholar. A college literary club, including among its members John Richard Green (who entered as a scholar in 1855), jointly produced a poem entitled The Gentiad, satirising the more exclusive and wealthier set to which Morris belonged (Letters of J.R. Green, p. 15). One of its most caustic lines, attributed by Morris to Green (though it is authoritatively stated it was not written by him), gave great offence to Morris owing to a subtle imputation on his father's professional conduct. The breach between Morris and Green was never healed, not even in 1877, when both were simultaneously elected fellows of the college, shortly after the appointment as principal of Morris's old master, Dr. Harper. Career Morris was admitted as a student of Lincoln's Inn on 21 November 1856, awarded a certificate of honour on 7 January 1861, and called to the bar on 18 November 1861. 2 poems, "At Chambers" and "A Separation Deed," are based on incidents in his professional life.Thomas, 650. He practised for 20 years as a conveyancing counsel, retiring from active legal work in 1881.Lewis Morris, Encyclopædia Britannica 1911, Volume 18, 870. Wikisource, Web, Feb. 24, 2017. He married in 1868 Florence Julia, widow of Franklin C. Pollard, who survived him. By her, he had 2 daughters and a son, Arthur Lewis, a naval constructor at Elswick. He did not announce his marriage till 1902. Comparatively late in life Morris made his appearance as a writer of verse with 3 series of miscellaneous poems, called Songs of Two Worlds, published respectively in 1872, 1874 and 1875. These little volumes proved him to have a refined taste and a gentle metrical fluidity, which soon won for his work considerable popularity. In 1876 and 1877 he made a more important venture with The Epic of Hades, an attempt to re-tell the stories of Hellenic mythology with a certain modern and allegorical setting. This work, though it is somewhat strained in sentiment and is not free from artistic infelicities, contains his best verse and has passages of undeniable force and effect. Among his other books were Gwen (1880), Songs Unsung (1883), Gycia (1886), A Vision of Saints (1890), and Idylls and Lyrics (1896).Lewis Morris, Encyclopædia Britannica 1911, Volume 18, 870. Wikisource, Web, Feb. 24, 2017. In 1905 Morris issued a volume of essays, appreciations, and addresses under the title The New Rambler: From desk to platform (Longmans, Green). The work, in which he discusses his ideals as a poet, and answers some of his severest critics, is largely autobiographical. Most of the addresses deal with problems of Welsh education, which was the 2nd great interest of his life. Education reform Until 1876, Morris, who then lived chiefly in London, took no active interest in Welsh affairs. He had not mastered the Welsh language (cf. his poem, The Eisteddfod: "Hardly the fair tongue I know"), nor did he know much of the history and literature of Wales, while Welsh archaeology did not appeal to him. Hugh Owen first interested him in Welsh education (New Rambler, 262). In October 1878 he became one of the joint honorary secretaries to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, which from its opening in 1872 depended entirely on voluntary contributions. From then on he was concerned with all its varying fortunes, drafting various appeals on its behalf and (with another) its amended constitution in 1885 (after its receipt of a government grant). He was joint treasurer of the college from March 1889 to March 1896, and from the latter date till his death one of its 2 vice-presidents. He was one of the 5 members of a departmental committee appointed in August 1880, with Lord Aberdare as chairman, to inquire into intermediate and higher education in Wales. The committee's report (C. 3047), issued in 1881, resulted in the establishment of 2 new colleges and eventually of the University of Wales, and the passing of tho Intermediate Education (Wales) Act of 1888, "the educational charter of modern Wales." During the inquiry Morris epecially interested himself in the higher education of women, to which he was "early a convert" (New Rambler, 280. 301). He threw himself with vigour into the propaganda and constructive effort which followed the report's issue. After the establishment of the university in 1893, he became its junior deputy chancellor for 1901-1903. He was a member of the council of the Cymmrodorion Society from 1877 to Dec. 1802, and thenceforth one of its vice-presidents. He served as a member of the Carmarthenshire intermediate education committee, and was a justice of the peace for Carmarthen. When Sir Hugh Owen's proposal for the reform of the Eisteddfod by the formation of a National Eisteddfod Association was adopted, Morris was in September 1880 appointed chairman of the council of the executive committee of the new body. That office he held till his death. Politics During Tennyson's later years Morris was a frequent guest of his (Lord Tennyson, by his Son, ii. 389), and on Tennyson's death in 1892 he was disappointed of the poet-laureateship (cf. New Rambler, p. 180). In 1893 he wrote the odes on the marriage of the Duke of York (now George V) and on the opening of the Imperial Institute. Next to the laureateship his main ambition was a seat in parliament, which he also failed to win. An advanced liberal in politics, and from 1887 till his death a member of the political committee of the Reform Club, he was in favour of home rule and Welsh disestablishment. But his chief interest lay in social reform (see his odes for the first co-operative festival in 1888, for the trade union congress at Swansea in 1901, and on the opening of the West Wales Sanatorium in 1906).Thomas, 652. In 1868, and again in 1881 and 1883, he was invited to contest the Carmarthen Boroughs but withdrew in favour of another liberal. In July 1886 he unsuccessfully contested the Pembroke Boroughs (cf. his idyll, "In Pembrokeshire," 1886). In 1892 Morris and another liberal submitted to arbitration their respective claims to be the official liberal candidate for Carmarthen Boroughs, but the award went against Morris (Western Mail, 14 April 1892). He was not a popular speaker, and suffered from a shyness often mistaken for hauteur. He died at Penbryn on 12 Nov. 1907, and was buried at Llangunnor. Writing Morris owed his vogue as a poet, which lasted throughout his lifetime, to his enforcement of simple truths in simple language and metre. He earnestly taught in verse a cheerful optimism, and if he often excited critical scorn for his lack of subtlety, he exerted a wide moral influence. His later work follows too closely upon the influence of Tennyson, from which he is never altogether free; but his earnest didacticism, genial optimism and evident sincerity have given his work a thoroughly wholesome moral influence. ''Songs of Two Worlds'' In 1871 there appeared anonymously the first series of his Songs of Two Worlds, by a new writer. It consisted chiefly of lyrical poems contributed from 1865 onwards to a small literary and artistic society, The Pen and Pencil Club, which met at the house of Peter Taylor.(The New Rambler, 112). The sonorous verse and placid optimism won for these Songs great popularity, and a second series which followed in 1874, and a third issued in 1875, proved equally attractive. Though published anonymously, the last poem in the third series, "To My Motherland," indicated the writer's identity (cf. Athenæum, 23 Sept. 1876). A new edition of the 3 series in 1 volume was issued in 1878. ''The Epic of Hades'' Meanwhile, Tennyson's Tithonus had suggested to Morris''New Rambler'', 121. a series of blank verse monologues put into the mouths of the chief characters of Greek mythology. His three earliest poems on this plan — "Marsyas," "Eurydice," and "Endymion" — were rejected by various magazines''New Rambler, 112''. Other poems expressed in a like spirit the reconceptions and moral ideals of his own age. The pieces were linked together by the device of a pilgrimage to the Shades. Finally all were collected umder the general title of The Epic of Hades in 3 sections named Hades, Tartarus, and Olympus. The Hades section appeared as book ii. of the Epic early in 1876 ; this was followed by books i. and iii. in the subsequent year, when a complete edition in 1 volume was also issued. The work, which was mostly written "amid the not inappropriate sounds and gloom of the (London) Underground Railway",New Rambler, 117. was described as "by the author of Songs of Two Worlds." The success of the volume was surprising: it ran through 3 editions of 1000 copies each in its 1st year, and some 45 editions (exceeding 50,000 copies) during the author's lifetime. A quarto edition with illustrations by George R. Chapman appeared in 1879. The lucidity of expression, the many idyllic pictures, the passages of spiritual exaltation, coupled with a strongly didactic character, made the work specially popular with the middle class, whose appreciation was voiced by John Bright when in his speech on Cobden at Bradford, 25 July 1877, he described it as "another gem added to the wealth of the poetry of our language." Later verse After The Epic of Hades came in 1879 Gwen: A drama in monologue, in six acts. The theme was the tragedy of a secret marriage. Its form may have been suggested by Tennyson's Maud. There is an interesting description of Llangunnor church, where the author was himself buried. The Ode of Life (1880), consisting of a series of poems descriptive of various stages and phases of life, maintained the Epic's note of high moral purpose. Songs Unsung (1883) was the first volume issued under the author's name, described on the title-page as "by Lewis Morris of Penbryn." He had used the same designation in 1876, when he first published a poem under his own name, an elegiac poem in memory of his great-grandfather's poet-friend Goronwy Owen, in Y Cjnumrodor, vol. i., and in the Poetical Works of G. Owen (edited by R. Jones, 1876), ii. 309-312); but this was never included in any edition of Morris's works. Penbryn was the name of the house near Aberystwyth where his great-grandfather had spent his later years, and Morris bestowed it on a house on the outskirts of Carmarthen bought by his father about 1840. This "territorial" description of the author was the main theme of a savage attack on him in the Saturday Review for 24 November 1883.. Lewis Morris was contrasted with "William Morris of Parnassus." Yet the Saturday Review had already hailed The Epic of Hades as "one of the most considerable and original feats of recent English poetry" (ibid. 31 March 1877). Gycia: A tragedy, in five acts (1886), written "with a view to stage representation," and based on a story (circa 970 A.D.) recorded by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his De Administratione Imperii, displays more of a Greek spirit than any other of Morris's works. Songs of Britain (1887) contains some patriotic odes like that on Queen Victoria's Jubilee (1887); 3 long poems based on Welsh legends are inferior in treatment to his verse on classical subjects. Collected editions of Morris's works were issued in 3 volumes in 1882, and in 1 volume in 1890. A Vision of Saints (1890) was Morris's last poem of top-rate importance, and was intended to be the Christian counterpart of his pagan Epic of Hades, consisting of a series of monologues of 19 saintly characters, concluding with Elizabeth Fry and Father Damien.Thomas, 651. His remaining volumes were 3 collections of lyrics — Songs without Notes (1894); Idylls and Lyrics (1896) ; and Harvest Tide (1901) — and The Life and Death of Leo the Armenian (Emperor of Rome): A tragedy, in five acts (1904). When in 1907 Morris carefully revised his collected works for a 16th edition, he announced in the preface that he "brought to a definite close his long career as a writer of verse." Critical reputation Glyn Johns, writing in in 1959 for the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, calls Morris's verse "wholesome, fluent, but uninspired." Recognition In 1895, during Lord Rosebery's premiership, Morris was knighted. He received the honorary degree of D.Litt. from the University of Wales in 1906. His portrait, painted in 1906 by Mr. Carey Morris (of Llandilo), is at Penbryn. A bust by Sir William Goscombe John, R.A., was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1899. An authorised selection of his poems was issued in 1904, and after his death a volume of selections, "reprinted under the author's supervision" from the 14th edition of the collected works, appeared in 'The Muses' Library.' Publications Poetry *''Songs of Two Worlds. London: Henry S. King, 1871. **''Songs of Two Worlds: Second series. London: Henry S. King, 1874. **''Songs of Two Worlds: Third series. London: Henry S. King, 1875. **''Songs of Two Worlds (complete in one volume). London: Kegan Paul, 1878. *''The Epic of Hades. London: Henry S. King, 1877. *Gwen: a drama in monologue, in six acts. London: Beccles, 1879. *The Ode of Life. London C. Kegan Paul, 1880. *''No Title Available. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1882. *''Songs Unsung. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1883. * ''The Lewis Morris Birthday Book. London, 1884. * Poetical Works. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1885. *''Songs of Britain. London: Kegan Paul, Trench 1887. * ''A Vision of Saints. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner 1890. * The Works of Sir Lewis Morris. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1891. * Odatis: a love tale. London: Hildesheimer & Faulkner, 1892. * Love and Sleep, and other poems. London: Faulkner & Co., 1893. * Songs Without Notes. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1894. * Idylls and Lyrics. London: Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1896. * The Diamond Jubilee: An ode. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1897. *''Selections from the Works of Sir Lewis Morris. London: Kegan Paul, 1897. *Harvest-tide: A book of verse. London: Kegan Paul, 1900; New York: T.Y. Crowell & Co., 1901. * ''Poems: Authorized selection. London: Routledge / New York: Dutton, 1904. Plays *''Gycia: A tragedy in five acts. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1886. *''The Life and Death of Leo the Armenian, Emperor of Rome: A tragedy. in five acts. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1904. Non-fiction * The Greatness and Decline of Venice. Oxford, UK: T. and G. Shrimpton, 1858. *''The New Rambler: From desk to platform''. London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green, 1905. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results=Sir Lewis Morris, WorldCat, Web, July 23, 2012. See also *Anglo-Welsh poets *List of British poets References * . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 24, 2017. Notes External links ;Poems *Morris in the Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse: "A Heathen Hymn," "A New Orphic Hymn" *Morris in A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895: "At Last," Song ("Love took my life and thrill'd it"), "On a Thrush Singing in Autumn" *Poems by Lewis Morris at English Poetry *Sir Lewis Morris at PoemHunter (96 poems) *Sir Lewis Morris at Poety Nook (99 poems) ;Books *Works by or about Lewis Morris at Internet Archive (scanned books original editions color illustrated) *''Works of Sir Lewis Morris at Amazon.com ;About *Morris, Sir Lewis in the [[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|1911 Encyclopædia Britannica]] *Morris, Sir Lewis (1833-1907) in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography Morris, Lewis Category:1833 births Category:1907 deaths Category:Alumni of Jesus College, Oxford Category:People from Carmarthenshire Category:Welsh poets Category:People educated at Cowbridge Grammar School Category:19th-century poets Category:Anglo-Welsh poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets